


I'm a Cold Night's Intake

by ardett



Series: Love is a Polaroid [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Mythology References, Original Mythology, Other, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, Polyamory, dark!Kuroo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 15:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7392169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardett/pseuds/ardett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Akaashi is a favored child of Diana, wielder of moonlight and caution.</p>
<p>Bokuto is blessed by the sun, storing it's warmth and light for his own use.</p>
<p>Kuroo is darkness, grown from self-hate and guilt, from loving what he can't have. <i>Something</i> has been looking for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm a Cold Night's Intake

**Author's Note:**

> The Kuroo part of the series I'm doing based off of the lyrics from Imagine Dragons, Love is a Polaroid. (All works are standalones, so no need to read the others.)

For centuries, you stumble through the stars. You reel past galaxies, whirling whites and piercing purples and belligerent blues but above all, darkness. Between every dash of light, stretching between suns and moons and stars, darkness.

You wonder, how after so long racing and running and spinning through space, how you’ve never touched the light.

It skates around your fingertips, dies in your hands. You cannot be together. For years, thousands of years, you didn’t know why. You knew nothing and no one but yourself, so who else could you blame but yourself?

And in the end, it was. It was you. You, the darkness, it’s all the same. You are the darkness.

 

Then, you come across a planet. It’s something… else. Something other.

You’ve dwelled on planets before, ones hidden on the edges of solar systems or cast so far out into the darkness alone that they’re lost to all but you.

But this one is different. Revolving green and blue and white, it’s blindingly bright. You feel that desperate thirst for the light rise fervent within you but as you draw near, a familiar throb resounds through you as you cower from what you yearn for so.

With it though, there’s a tug. A pull that calls  _ home, safety, darkness _ . You look again and you see it. You. The darkness.

It hides in the hearts of humans, not malignant or malicious, but quiet, gentle and always, always there. And like you, it aches for the light. Especially in one boy.

He’s young, as everyone on this planet is young, for you are old and eternal, but his darkness is young as well. As you coast closer, through cloud, across sea, over land, you watch it grow and fluctuate. It’s borne of something you’ve never known the name of but have felt for millennia, before this boy and his darkness were ever born. The want and desire for the light, some swelling word that encompases what he feels, you feel.

_ Love? _

Yes and no. Bigger than that. For you, you have  _ felt _ forever. For him, a feeling that yearns for more than just one but two, bigger than he can hold in his heart. And his darkness is that guilt, that shame, that secret, that  _ love _ .

You move to ask for entry, to knock on the doors that are his lungs to the hearth that is his heart. But he has already been waiting and he is a blackhole, powerful and persuasive. You enter.

 

You-He-Kuroo Tetsurou falls to the gym floor and gasps. Hands and knees hit the ground like hail from the sky and the world seems to brighten, darken, glow and fade. He squeezes his eyes shut.

Dimly, there’s shouting bouncing through the gym, screeches of distress in the late night. Two voices rise above the echos, ships of safety in the seething sea, and Tetsurou opens his eyes to answer them.

His eyes are darkness. They gaze black and unseeing, flat expanses of nothingness. From his hands, a stain of starry night sky spreads, like a drop of ink dripped into water. For a second, space is laid out upon the floor, moving planets, shifting stars, and then suddenly, with a suffocated boom, it’s all pulled back inside Tetsurou.

He falls completely as the world slides back into place.

“Kuroo!” Koutarou pitched forward, panic burning the edges of his words. His hands clutch warm and strong at Tetsurou’s shoulders and he’s asking questions like rapid fire.

Tetsurou flickers. Images and thoughts overlay each other, things that are the same yet different,  different yet the same. He sees Koutarou and Keiji but he thinks  _ light, light, light _ . He’s aware that he’s gripping Koutarou’s forearms and that that is nothing but it feels like  _ something _ , something he’s wanted but couldn’t have, couldn’t have because his hands were unable to touch. No, that’s not right. It was because Koutarou and Keiji were untouchable because they had each other. Had they always been Koutarou and Keiji to him? Had he always been Kuroo Tetsurou?

Something in his mind slots into place and a surge of want throws everything else into a haze. He’s waited for _ so long _ . He just wants to know what the light feels like.

“Kou-tarou…” Tetsurou whispers. He sees Koutarou’s face become confused at the use of that name and it feels wrong but so  _ right _ as he leans up and kisses him.

Immediately, Tetsurou knows that this, this is what he was looking for. He was nothing before this, just darkness in a bottle, empty space. But now, there’s warmth and light and love, fitting so smoothly into a part of him that had been missing.

He wants Koutarou to feel it too, he wants him to understand. He pushes a little harder, deeper, and suddenly, Koutarou is kissing him back.

It’s overwhelming, everything,  _ everything _ , Koutarou and Keiji- Keiji?

At the scattering thought, a yearning even more poignant, still unsated, rips through his veins. He’s loved them,  _ he loves them _ , and desperately, desperately, he wants them to love him back. (It’s not impossible, it’s happening, isn’t it happening?)

As if in answer, Tetsurou feels the soft heat of Koutarou’s heart beginning to glow. The light shines out from under his t-shirt, like small sun is nestled in his chest. Love seems to leak out of it.

Koutarou has always carried the sun’s blessing, storing it’s praise until it glimmers in his heart when he’s happy or loved or loving.

Tetsurou places a hand over that heart and the light stays there, pouring between his fingers. It doesn’t shy away, it doesn’t dance out of his reach, he’s not  _ alone _ anymore.

Keiji hisses, “Bokuto!” Like something terrible, horrible. Koutarou pulls back, the glow of his heart dimming. It goes out completely as he sees Keiji behind Tetsurou.

“Akaashi, what are you doing?” His voice is small and confused, and Tetsurou feels something in his chest seize at that.

“Bokuto, come over here.” Keiji’s voice is level but skirting the border of fear.

(Fear of him? No, no… (Yes?))

Bokuto shifts, not away really, but not any closer, just a nervous shuffling of limbs, but now Tetsurou can see Keiji. And the bow in his hands.

It shines, shimmers, emanates its own light that glints fearful in Keiji’s eyes. The whole instrument, from curved bow to taut string, gleams silver as moonlight- No, wait.

Something clicks, awareness.

The bow  _ is made _ of moonlight.

Some part of him already knows this but the other part asks, “A child of Diana?”

Keiji pulls the string a little tighter. “She has no children. But there are some she favors. But Kuroo already knew that.” His eyes narrow, silver pupils ringed in green. “And you are not him.”

He keeps the arrow trained on Tetsurou’s chest as Tetsurou stands. The shadow he leaves shifts and shudders, like there’s something more than a boy it silhouettes.

“I am Kuroo Tetsurou.”

“No, you are something else.” Tetsurou feels Koutarou’s eyes on him, yellow as sunlit fields, clearly unsettled as Keiji continues, “ _ I saw _ you enter him. We both saw how his body reacted to your presence. And then you- Koutarou-”

“Just because I haven’t, doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to. That was there before.”

“And what’s there now?  _ Who’s _ there now?”

“I am Kuroo Tetsurou.” He replies simply. “But before… I was darkness.” He blinks and his eyes turn black as outer space. Koutarou flinches back violently. Tetsurou blinks again, and one eyes is back to faded gold while the other remains saturated in shadow. It’s an off kilter look, like the sinking awe and disquieting wonder of an eclipse. “Now I am both. But everything is still here.” He takes a step forward and Keiji takes a step back. “Keiji,” He pleads, “I’m still me. There’s just more of me.”

Slowly, slow as the death of a star, Keiji lowers the bow. The moonlight dissipates in the air, stripped away by a breath. Keiji’s hands are shaking. Tetsurou’s eyes are normal again. Human.

Keiji takes hesitant steps, not towards Tetsurou but rather towards to Koutarou. He takes Koutarou’s hand, gripping it all white knuckles and red fingertips.

Koutarou’s teeth bite into his lip. “Was that you, Kuroo? Who kissed me?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say it was. We-” Koutarou glances at Keiji. Keiji shakes his head, barely. “I want to know that that was real.” Koutarou ends hopefully.

I, not we.

“I want it to be real. Koutarou, Keiji-”

“Don’t call us that. Kuroo didn’t call us that.” Keiji murmurs.

Tetsurou ignores the sharp stab of hurt that stings in his chest.

“Akaashi. Bokuto. I’m not trying to hurt you. Or break you apart. I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t have kissed you, Bokuto. I wasn’t… I know I’m not myself. But the secret was killing me. It  _ hurt  _ so much,” Tetsurou’s hand clenches over his heart and his fingertips sear black, “right here. And every day, it’s been killing me.

“Because I know, I know it’s selfish of me. You’re happy, you’re beautiful, you  _ love _ each other. And it’s so wrong of me to feel the way I do, not even for just one of you but both of you! I know I should and I do: I  _ hate _ myself for it.” His hands tangle in his hair. The energy around him grows stronger, pulsing darker with every beat of his heart.

The darkness heightens every emotion. It’s the same darkness that magnifies sound and fear in twilight woods, magnifies wonder in a starlit sky. The fathomlessness of eternity. This is what has changed in the mortal body of Kuroo Tetsurou.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Tetsurou whispers. His voice cracks. It  _ aches _ , like regret and disgust and shame and despair.

He feels something warm slip down his heated cheeks.

“Oh, Kuroo.” Koutarou whimpers. He reaches out a hand to wipe away the tears but Keiji tugs him back, silent eyes still watching Tetsurou.

Koutarou struggles, even as he and Keiji seem to exchange something without words. The silver of Keiji’s pupils contract as they look at Koutarou.

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this, Akaashi!” Koutarou directs at Keiji angrily. “It’s Kuroo, can’t you hear it in his voice? And you know, you know how I feel and Kuroo’s here confessing his love for  _ both of us _ , and you won’t even let me touch him when he’s clearly suffering? I can see why Diana chose you, you’re fucking heartless,” Koutarou spits, wrenching himself away from Keiji.

Tetsurou closes his eyes for a long second, tears sliding like stars down his face. “Don’t, Koutarou. Please don’t.”

He glimpses Koutarou’s expression, a betrayed one, looking directly at him. Then, it falls into regret, vulnerable as Koutarou scrubs at his face in frustration.

“You’re right. You’re right. I didn’t mean that. Akaashi, I didn’t mean that. I just… don’t understand why this is so  _ hard _ !” He looks beseechingly at Keiji. “I  _ love _ you, Keiji. You know that. But I’ve said to you that I feel… I feel the same way about Kuroo! So why can’t we just be together?”

“The same way? The same…” Tetsurou murmurs, disbelieving and uncomprehending. Hope kindles and the darkness lets it shine like a beacon. “The same way you feel about Akaashi… You feel about me?”

“I’m sorry.” Koutarou delicately brushes away the tears and leans their foreheads together. Tetsurou can’t breathe. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

Gently, Koutarou places their lips together. Their hands lace and Tetsurou feels the heat of the sun there, in all the places they meet. Tetsurou is the one to pull away.

“I won’t take you away from him, Bo.” He whispers. He is not the same darkness as a black hole. He will not take anymore.

“I know.” Koutarou smiles sadly.

“And so do I.” Keiji breathes out. “That’s why you never said anything. Kuroo or Tetsurou or the darkness, you won’t hurt us.”

“ _ Never. _ ” Tetsurou replies fiercely. Koutarou squeezes his hand tightly.

“I believe that. I believe  _ you _ . And…”

“I believe in us.” Koutarou finishes triumphantly. His heart glows supernova bright.

“I believe in us.” Keiji repeats, stepping forward with a full moon heart.

“I believe in us.”

And before them, the universe seems to expand.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to ask any questions, I know my imaginary mythology was somewhat ambiguous, and that in addition to scattered figurative and literal jargon.


End file.
